movie coverI'd rather be watching TV![IMDB link] [Netflix link]

PLOT SUMMARY: Hit men must hang out in the town of Bruges (Belgium), awaiting an assignment that one of them will dread carrying out.

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): [highlight for spoilers]→ Whining child-murdering hitman fails to achieve spiritual bullshit.

PEOPLE: Colin Farrell (Bullseye in the DareDevil movie, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus) as the whiny, no-fun hitman. Brendon Gleeson (Beowulf, Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody in the Harry Potter movies, The Village, Troy, A.I., Braveheart) as the more serious hitman. Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort from the Harry Potter Movies, Sunshine, Strange Days, Schindler’s List, The Hurt Locker) as the big boss. Clemence Poesy (Fleur Delacour from Harry Potter) as a random drug dealer/movie star/accessory to robbery. Also, you may have seen the dwarf before in Harold & Kumar, where he played a giant bag of weed (haha). He was also in Howard The Duck, American Pie:Beta House, and American Pie:The Naked Mile.

I’m kind of surprised how much overlap there is between people in this movie, and people in Harry Potter movies. It also has a brief scene with Ciaran Hinds, who will play Dumbledore in the final 2 Harry Potter movies.

QUIRKS: Hit men, Europe, drugs, midgets, spiritual redemption, slow-paced build-up.

VISUALS: Dreary European medieval buildings.

I liked the Hieronymous Bosch stuff they briefly showed; always been a big fan of his work.

BAD STUFF: The whole moral foundation for the movie is kind of flawed [see MORALS, below], and it’s just a bunch of spiritual redemption bullshit that never really resolves. The movie is, more or less, a waste of time. I don’t know WHAT the hell people see in this to make it an IMDB Top 250 movie; I don’t think this belongs in the Top 1500, let alone Top 250. For once, I’m actually jealous of the IMDB-forum posters who say they turned it off 10 minutes into it.

It wasn’t outright bad — It just held my attention, promising to deliver more, while failing to ever do so.

Very, very, very slow. Too slow. The last movie I saw that took place in such a dreary European setting, with such a slow pace, was Let The Right One In — which also disappoited me.

It definitely had its funny moments, but it felt like they could have done much more with it. It ended up coming off as kind of generically quirky for quirkiness’s sake or something. I’d rather watch Hot Fuzz (which also disappointed me by not being nearly as funny as I thought).

This movie failed as a comedy movie; it failed as a drug movie; it failed as an action movie. All that was left was spiritual bullshit / emo whining related to children (fuck children). It’s like they tried to sprinkle elements (action, comedy, drugs) onto a thin spiritual redemption plot in order to spice it up. And it did spice it up — but only enough to hold my interest, tricking me into thinking there would be a worthy conclusion or message to the movie.

Note to self: Start asking people WHY I should listen to their movie recommendations.

MORALS: So being a hitman is “okay”, and killing innocent people on accident is “okay” — but as soon as you kill a *child* by accident, suddenly even the criminals want to kill you? Because children have magical powers that make hitmen and criminals care? Yeah right. I happen to think killing an adult is worse than a child; more is invested in the adult. So for me, the whole moral foundation of this movie is completely flawed. “What if you kill a kid on accident?” is a stupid question to me–the real question should simply be “What if you kill a person on accident?” It should make no difference if it’s a kid or not. The fact that they had to use a child here just strikes me as emotional string-pulling.

So anyway — If you are someone who swoons and looses all logic when children are involved (like, I’m guessing, the writers of this movie, and most of the people on planet earth who are merely expressions of their child-loving, child-creating DNA-influenced existence), then you might be able buy into it. But only if you can also buy into all the spiritual bullshit too. Good luck with that. I’m guessing most people with kids have already lost sight of reality, and will automatically identify with the morals here. Just another reason to hate kids as far as I’m concerned: How about showing some morals where your DNA isn’t involved?

And of course there’s the whole idea of finding hitmen lovable and cuddly. Which I actually *can* buy into… But Pulp Fiction did it much better. Even How To Be A Serial Killer, while not that great of a movie, caused me to be more interested in its characters than In Bruges did.

In short: OVERRATED. Or as this guy says, it’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes Of Crappy Cinema”. I don’t really think it was “crappy”, but it wasn’t good either.

POLITICS: Not much, but some anti-American sentiment.

CONCLUSION: Bullshit spiritual redemption — and only because children were involved — spiced up with bits of comedy, action, and quirkiness. But not enough to get the taste of bullshit out of my mouth. Failed as a comedy, action, drug movie, leaving only spiritual bullshit. Had its moments, but not worth watching. Definitely not worth of IMDB Top 250.

RATINGS:
Clint: Netflix: 2/5 stars. IMDB: 5.4/10.
Carolyn: Netflix: 3/5 stars. IMDB: 7/10.

The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 8.1/10 (Top 250: #189), Netflix: 3.5/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.6/5 stars–WRONG!). Way overrated.

RECOMMENDATION: If you’re spiritual and into loving children and thinking bad things happening to children are so much worse than adults, and can stand very slow paced movies, then you’ll probably enjoy this based on the high IMDB ratings. But if you’re an atheist child-hater who loves comedy movies and isn’t crazy about mob-style movies — stay away from this. Far, far away.

SIMILAR MOVIES: I’ve heard Pulp Fiction and Fargo, but those movies are actually good. Their quirks are fun to sit through. Their endings leave you satisfied. Not so with In Bruges.

I’ve also heard Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. Those movies were mostly un-memorable generic-pass action movies to me. Decent to watch, but no real memory. In Bruges will definitely stick with my memory more, but I still liked it less than all of the above.

I also wasn’t exactly blown away by The Boondock Saints or No Country For Old Men, which are also mentioned alongside this movie at times.

IMDB also mentions Miller’s Crossing. I thought that movie was passable, with some incredible scenes — but it also disappointed me, as many Coen Brothers movies do.

So basically — this isn’t really my kind of movie.

MOVIE QUOTE:

Ken: Harry, let’s face it. And I’m not being funny. I mean no disrespect, but you’re a cunt. You’re a cunt now, and you’ve always been a cunt. And the only thing that’s going to change is that you’re going to be an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.

Ken: You from the States?
Jimmy: Yeah. But don’t hold it against me.

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: I think Mom, Dad, and my sister loved it. Ian put it in his Top 100 movies of the 2010s. He said it was original and engaging, and I can’t really agree with either of those. :/ Wish I did… I also have another FB friend who said it was brilliant. Really, I don’t see what people see in it.

Music: KMFDM – Inane (Undermined Mix)